Cigar box guitars are an old American tradition. This form of antique guitar construction spans back well over 150 years in our country's history. Since the mid 1860's up to the early 1950's and before musical instrument mass production brought the cost down, it was common for people to make their own guitar or stringed instrument out of old cigar boxes and scavenged or found wood.

My name is John McNair, I have a small work shop in Sparks, Nevada. These guitars are for sale world wide and I can mail you one anywhere in the world.

If you would like to buy one of the guitars on this website,I have many cigar box guitars for sale, email me for the current price list my email is john@reddogguitars.com

This is where the "Blues" all started.An old used cigar box, reclaimed wood made into a guitar neck, and homemade music.This painting above is of "L. Rupert" 1868 at the G.D. Flynn Brewery New River Falls, MA

Photo provided by Shane Speal - Circa 1880

The first Bo Diddley guitarcirca 1945now owned by Hard Rock Café

Everybody was in on it! Homemade is part of the past, but still part of the present.

Playing a homemade guitar provides a happiness that cannot be found on a store bought guitar.

Many times people have emailed me and said that just by hearing a video of a cigar box guitar or seeing a photo of one of these instruments online has helped them find a new direction in life, either coping with serious illness, trauma or some type of sadness. It helps them find a new hobby and pastime and helped them find a sense of inner happiness.Not to mention all of the people who have wanted to learn how to play a regular guitar in the past but never could learn all that fretboard math and fancy music theory. Once they discover how easy it is to play a cigar box guitar, a new hobby and spark in life is ignited in many people. Anyone can learn to play a cigar box guitar. These guitars are real simple to understand and easy to play.Just another reason to NEVER bury your desires or give up on your dreams of learning to play guitar, It's never too late!

The point is with that statement, even if you are 70 and want to learn how to play guitar, Now is the time. You CAN do it!It's very easy to learn how to play 3 string guitar, more on that topic on the next page of this website.

What about you? Where do you stand in life? Once again, I have heard all kinds of stories of great happiness. From veterans to retired people looking for a new direction in their life, when people see or hear a cigar box guitar for the first time, it really helps them open a new chapter in their life. I have heard many true life miraculous stories that the cigar box guitar has brought real life health and healing miracles into people's lives!

Long before the Gretch Guitar Company machine made and mass produced Bo Diddley's legendary square guitar, Bo made his own guitars himself.He did it with his own hands and with some simple hand tools. He made them in the true spirit of "Americana." He never kept count, but all of the research I have done shows that Bo possibly made between 25 to 30 homemade square wooden guitars.Bo was the original Do-it-Yourself Rocker!

If you have always played standard 6 string guitar,you will enjoy the refreshing change of playing a 3 or 4 string Cigar Box Guitar.It's much easier to play and it's a lot of fun.Plus your music sounds really authentic and vintage with very little effort.

The oldest known photo of a Cigar Box instrument is actually hand drawn art by Edwin Forbes It is of Union soldiers at a Civil War encampment 1863-64.This photo is dated 1865 at the "Siege Of Charleston."

I have filmed and editing the most complete How to Build a cigar box guitar DVD available.I will show you what to do, everything is covered from start to finish. It doesn't matter if this is your first time building, or your 10th.If you would like to build guitars that get that old-time vintage 1880's to 1930's sound, I will show you how I make a guitar achieve the tone and how I build that part into the guitar.

In this DVD you will learn exactly how to make your guitar sound like it stepped out of the past with a vintage an authentic sound of early Americana.This DVD will save you many hours of trying to learn on your own.

This hobby is very easy and alot of fun,You can make one too, click here.

If you already make cigar box guitars, after you study my work, you can take your guitars to the next level.This DVD is from A to Z, the complete start to finishand this video is full of many secrets that can only be found on a Red Dog Guitar. The best part is you too can build a guitar just like the ones on this website by watching this DVD.

If you have questions email me john@reddogguitars.com

If I told you the guitar below has a homemade bridge made from a Popsicle stick that was cut down and painted black with a small piece of hard white plastic glued on top to support the strings...Would you believe me? Well It does, and it sounds fantastic!

If you want to try to make your own cigar box guitar, I have a DVD that shows you everything from A to Z. Everyone tells me at some point, "Cigar box guitars are just as much fun to build as they are to play" Why not give it a try?

There are many pages on this site, wait for the pages to load correctly.There's allot of photos of guitars for sale on this site

This 1865 "Arrows & Talons" is one of my all time fav-o-rite works.Inspired by my Dad's "Old West" Time Life book collection I read as a kid.I love Old West and Native American art.Email me to see my newest models and prices at john@reddogguitars.com

In the early 1900's it was common to see many street musicians with a wide variety of cigar box instruments,homemade violins, cookie tin banjos, mandolins, cigar box ukuleles and guitars made from old cigar boxes and reclaimed wood.

Homemade instruments really became popular during the 1920's and 30's Great Depression.Poverty did not stop people from wanting to enjoy music and having fun with family and friends, in fact it made the desire even stronger. Music is free!People who were poor made their own instruments from old stuff they found in their house, shed or barn.

Cigar Box Mandolin circa 1930He's holding that thing with pride.

Sometimes a little is allot.

A simple and clean "traditional" style cigar box guitar plays and sounds exactly like music did a 100 years ago.Why? ...because it's made like homemade guitars were a 100 years ago!

email me for the current models and price list at john@reddogguitars.com

Just plug in and play!Some guitars I "old school" strait wire the pickups...no knobs, no frills...just funIt's easy to get a great old time vintage sound.News flash - It's just a stick running thru a cigar box!Email me to see my new guitar models list at john@reddogguitars.com

Native American themes and art is part of the history of cigars and tobacco. It is also a very important and fascinating part of American history. I could build a whole separate website on just that subject alone! If you didn't know, tobacco originates from America.

These cigar box guitars are built with just a few basic hand tools that most people have. You only need a small saw, sandpaper, a hand drill, a few screwdrivers a pocket knife, and some odds and ends, you do not need many tools at all.On the flip-side, since you DON'T need power tools, it's kind of liberating if you think about it.If you were to build regular guitars, you would need a whole shop of specialized tools and planes, But anyone can build a cigar box guitar by hand with only a few common hand tools....and guess where? Yep, right at home!

That is what's so fun and interesting about cigar box guitars, they are simple by nature.You can use old guitar parts from ebay and flea markets or get creative and make your own parts with stuff from around your house. I cover everything about building these neat homemade guitars on this DVD below. Give it a try, make one, you will have a blast.

What is a cigar box guitar?

In the South it's common to hear stories that Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins and all those other old-time Blues guys started playing guitar on a cigar box guitar. Not many people who follow Blues and Country music know this, but many famous Blues and Country singers started their career on a simple homemade cigar box guitar. One reason most Blues and Country music has such a distinctive sound is because it was derived off of music made on these simple instruments.The precursor to the cigar box guitar as an instrument was the diddly-bow. It was a one stringed instrument where the player would take a glass bottle neck and run it up and down a string while plucking the opposite end of the string to achieve the tone they where after.Because those basic "guitars" did not have frets, that early form of crude guitar playing is what evolved into the form of slide guitar we are familiar with today. That is what is thought to be the creation of Delta Blues and slide guitar from the "Southern Delta."

Lightin' Hopkins, Muddy Waters, Elmore James, they were all influenced in some way by these early homemade instruments. Many of them following along in their career as slide guitar players. That's where the blues and slide guitar truly started at. On those plantations and cotton fields, homemade guitars and 'field hollerin' went hand in hand. Blues players didn't play Gibsons or Martins, they couldn't afford them. If you grew up in poverty and wanted to play guitar, you had to build a guitar yourself.

This sound recording is of Ry Cooder's song "Billy The Kid."It is performed by Billy Gibbons of ZZ-Top.He is playing a homemade guitar built by Kurt Schoen and this song is an excerpt from a Mark Maron interview from You-tube of a previously recorded 2015 Podcast.I have presented it here only for educational and commentary purposes in relation to the brief discussion about of the history of the cigar box guitar. (Copyright Law 107-Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use section; 40)All Copyrights for this material are the property of their respective owners.

The art and lettering on this website and on these guitars is all hand drawn freehand.Most of the art is inspired by brands and Tobacco store advertising from the past.

I have many vintage themed guitars, email me at john@reddogguitars.com

Those humble beginnings of the cigar box guitar are what eventually gave this little known guitar a home in music history. This tradition of making and playing a homemade guitar continued from the 1880's and for many decades up until the 1950's, but this form of guitar construction never really went away. Many Blues musicians from the 60's, 70's and 80's kept this long forgotten art form alive. Even though homemade guitars have faded into obscurity, some Blues and Rock musicians still enjoy playing them today.

Today's modern and Chinese made guitars can't even come close to the true primitive sound these handmade guitars make. Cigar Box Guitars can be channeled into a creativity that many musicians desire for in their playing, giving them a more authentic sound.Blues guitarist, in particular, really enjoy playing cigar box guitars in the search of hearing "Delta Blues" in its purest form. Today you can still find guitar players who are looking for that raw and authentic sound from the past and they chose to play cigar box guitars.

Here is a wonderful example of one being played today, it really does take you back in time. Watch this video of Billy Gibbons of ZZ-Top playing a homemade cigar box guitar.

Shall I repeat myself? Cigar box guitars are very easy to learn to play.

Here is a homemade multi-track recording using a glass slide and plugged into a old vintage 70's Pignose Amp.

These blacked out antique finished guitars are satin smooth.They only look old but they are silky smooth to the touch.They play like a dream and sound like they've stepped right out of the 1930's.

email me for the current models and price list at john@reddogguitars.com

What is best for a vintage sound? A 3 string guitar or 4 string guitar?

The truth is they both sound exactly the same because they are both built the same. On a 3 string guitar, to find a certain note, you will have to slide up or down the neck one or more frets, but on a 4 string guitar to get that "same note" you can just jump up to the next string and there is that same note. The 4 string will just give you an access to a note either higher or lower up and down the neck at a different position on the neck.But they both sound and play exactly the same....easy as pie....do you want to try?

These guitars are all made by hand. In this photo below is my shop table. There isn't much involved in it's construction. They are mostly built with just glue and screwdrivers, a small hand saw, a few drill bits, some pliers, some old or used guitar parts, a ruler for measuring, pens and pencils, and a good pocket knife. They are just hand made and homemade.

This guitar above is a 4 string cigar box guitar played through a 1940's Silvertone Radio that has been turned into a retro Atomic guitar amplifier.

You can play just about everything on a 3 string guitar that you can on a 4 string guitar, but with four strings you have a slight advantage in that you can make the back ground strings "ring out" with a bit more fullness.Have a listen to this 4-string cigarbox guitar slide track.

In the late 1800's, homemade guitars were usually just simple crude instruments that usually only had a few strings. As long as some kind of "twang" came out of them, to those early Bluesmen, this was an exciting new world of possibilities.Making music on a cigar box guitar was just old fashioned ingenuity at work.

You don't need to be a great guitar player to play a 3 string guitar. These guitarsare super easy to learn to play!Let me mail you one today. I can mail you a guitar any where in the world.Email me to see my current price listand models at john@reddogguitars.com

The guitar above is from the early 1900's. It's a White Owl 4 string cigar box guitar. It's a wonderful piece of history.I would love to have heard it being played back when it was new. Imagine the wonderful music it must have made!

This video above is a very simple recording of a 3 string cigar box guitar.Nothing complex is happening, it's mostly just random strings ringing out naturally in the background with a fretted note here and there "on top" of the background notes.....and I can't forget to mention, a little dash of Slide to boot!

As the old saying goes, "listening is learning," so listen to the video above closely.BUT, don't just listen passively, pay attention and listen, but also watch where the notes are on the fretboard, you will hear and see this is a real simple and easy to play type of music.Blues music is a primitive form of music and simple by its nature to learn.If learning to play the guitar has always given you problems, you'll enjoy the freedom of a cigar box guitar. Instead of spending years trying to learn on a regular guitar, with a cigar box guitar you'll sound like a champ in 2 months!

I can also mail you a Compact Disc of this music ( a CD album) they are on the last page of this site. If you have questions or need help with downloading, contact me at john@reddogguitars.com

Do you like early 1900's old time blues and slide guitar?

Listen to these tracks for free right here, all this is cigar box guitar music and NO regular guitars, No singing, NO bands....this music made with only cigar box guitars. These songs will take you back in time to a time long ago in the past from the 1880's to the 1920's and 30's. You can relive those long and lost sounds that were once played on homemade cigar box guitars.

These two albums are also for sale for $14 each and if you want you can download them so you can listen to them later at work or in the car or walking and on any digital phone or computer,

Have a listen, ( If you would like to buy them, click on the blue word "buy" )

Here below is an antique cigar box guitar from the 1930's.It's made from an "Old Virgina" Cigar Box.

I make these Old Timer guitars in several different stylesEmail me for the current models and prices at john@reddogguitars.com

It's a lot of fun to record music at home. You only need a cigar box guitar, a small amp and some type of hand held recorder or microphone. For an amp, the legendary Pignose is one of my all time fav's!...but I also enjoy using cheap and old vintage electronics and playing thru old radios. They give off this raspy sound that is super awesome.Did you know you can hack into an old radio and use them as guitar amplifiers? Have a listen to this simple home recording. You can do it too!I am always building new guitars, if you would like to see the new cigar box guitars I have for sale, email me for the current prices and models at john@reddogguitars.com

I am always building new and different guitars. Email me for the current models and price list at john@reddogguitars.com